Improve Your Browsing Experience with Google Pack
The Internet has been known since its earliest days as a resource for free software. Along with its storehouse of information and the many different ways it provides of accessing specific types of information, Google also makes itself a software resource through Google Pack.
The Pack is a free set of software programs, some of which are provided by Google and some created by other organizations.
All are designed to give you what you need to surf the Internet quickly and safely and organize your computer as well. When you go to the Google Pack home page (http://pack.google.com) and review the software offered, you discover that it is divided into two groups: a core group of applications that come with the Pack, and a set of optional add-ons. At this writing, the core group includes the following:
- Google Earth, Google’s software for viewing street scenes or parts of the world in 3-D.
- Picasa, the desktop photo organizer.
- Google Desktop, the file organization and search utility.
- Google Toolbar, an add-on for Internet Explorer that lets you search from any location on the Web and blocks popup windows.
- Google Photos Screensaver, a screen saver for your computer that lets you display slideshows or your own photos on your monitor when it’s idle.
- Mozilla Firefox, the popular freeware browser that’s the leading alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox comes with its own version of Google Toolbar pre-installed.
- Adobe Reader, the free reader for PDF files.
- Norton Security Scan, a free utility that scans for viruses and other harmful programs.
- Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, an anti-spyware utility that detects and removes keyboard logging programs (programs that can track a user’s keyboard entries in order to steal passwords and other sensitive information), Trojan horses, and other spyware programs that you can download without your knowledge and that slow down your surfing as well as threaten your privacy.